Raisin in the Sun' features Roslyn actor

“ARaisin in the Sun,” a play that premiered in 1959 and went on to be nominated for four Tony Awards, runs through April 21 at the Arden Theatre’s F. Otto Haas Stage.

The play’s title comes from the poem “Harlem” by Langston Hughes. It was made into a film starring Sidney Poitier in 1961 and revised on Broadway in 2004 starring Sean Combs.

This current production, directed by Walter Dallas, the past artistic director of Freedom Theatre, begins in Chicago’s South Side, when a life insurance check sent to the Youngers’ home arrives with the promise of change. That’s when this African-American family considers buying a house in the all-white Clybourne Park neighborhood; but conflicting aspirations and a neighborhood’s intolerance threaten the dream’s reality.

Leading the cast as Lena Younger are Joilet F. Harris and U.R. as Walter Lee Younger, in the role first played by Poitier and Combs. Both Harris and U.R. have worked with Dallas before at Freedom Theatre and are happy to be working with him once again.

“This play is all about materialism that eclipses integrity. My character wants something he sees every day that he believes is a definition of manhood and success. He can’t get it and that’s eating away at him,” U.R says.

In explaining his rather unusual name, U.R., who’s from Roslyn, will only say, “It stands for right now all the time. And that’s it.”

U.R. says the idea of becoming an actor hit him onstage in high school.

“I think I was working on my part and someone in the audience was talking, which angered me. And so I decided to use a portion of the text I was speaking and threw it out to that person as if to say shut up. And they did. I think that kind of energy pushed me toward acting.”

Looking back, U.R. now admits that that was a stupid decision. “My original ambition should have been to be involved in something that would have provided some kind of consistent income, but there’s something about this artsy stuff that undermines the capacity to plan intelligently.”

And so here he is today, having been seen in other productions, such as “Blue Door,” “The Piano Lesson,” and “Gee’s Bend.” While trying to explain his current role in this current play, U.R. is quick to hand out kudos to Dallas, because, “Thanks to him, all the characters are played with intelligence.”

While he decided to pursue this career, U.R. also made a conscious decision not to seek formal training.

“To be quite honest, the educational process for a performance artist sucks — at least from my perspective. It’s all about experience for a performer, not a bunch of opinion-sharing. In my mind, a degree in acting is like a knife made of rubber. It’s interesting to look at, but it ain’t capable of stabbing or cutting anything.”

U.R says he’s looking forward to getting more involved in TV further down the line because he doesn’t like having to depend on theater people to give him a role.

“And I don’t like audiences,” he says. “I don’t mind the interaction right there with them in the moment, but I’m the kind of guy who finishes work onstage and then I’m out of there. I do what I have to do and that’s it.

“One bad thing about this business is that it lends itself to a whole lot of conjecture about nothing,” he concludes.